Jordan Peele Just Became The First Black Writer-Director With a $100M Movie Debut

Over the weekend, “Get Out” director Jordan Peele quietly made history when he became the first African-American writer-director to earn $100 million with his debut movie.

In its third weekend of release, the horror-satire continued to show long legs despite strong competition from two big blockbusters, “Logan” and “Kong: Skull Island.” The film only saw a 25 percent drop off from the previous weekend to hold to an estimated $21 million, bringing its domestic cume to an estimated $111 million.

Not only did Peele, who produced as well as wrote and directed “Get Out,” achieve the milestone with a $4 million budget and a largely unknown cast, he set a new studio record for Blumhouse in the process. “Get Out” only needed 16 days for its domestic cume to pass the nine-digit mark. That breaks the record set by Blumhouse’s other 2017 hit, “Split,” which reached $100 million in 19 days.

Horror movies usually rely on a strong opening weekend for the majority of their box office haul, after which they hit a substantial drop-off in subsequent weeks. Not so for “Get Out.” The Universal/Blumhouse film was expected by trackers to make $24 million in its opening weekend. Instead, “Get Out” ended up beating that projection in both its first and second weekends, posting a $34 million opening before dropping off to $28 million in week two.

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